Dallas Raines – 天気予報官

“Weathersoft” is a small but rather vibrant sub-subculture within mallsoft. Practitioners make art that serves to evoke services such as the Weather Channel and local meteorologist networks. Songs generally feature smooth jazz samples and tunes that are one level above muzak in furniture status. 天気予報官1 by Dallas Raines is no exception to the trend, featuring generally nondescript instrumental jazz music that truly sounds like something that plays during basic Weather Channel programming. Throughout my first listen, I was just waiting for a voice to say “your weather forecast”.

Tracks are generally short – as befits this type of classic-style sampling – with only one reaching past three minutes. Composition entails basic samplism of tracks with minimal editing except for fades and equalizing – however, there are several tracks that do a bit more, and these are the ones that you should definitely snag. “M E G A d o p p l e r メガドップラー” glitches about halfway through, interpreting the common signalwave method of microsample repetition as weathersoft. “Moderate Visibility 適度な可視性” has a few periods where the sample suddenly stretches itself out into pseudo-ambient territory, but unlike other producers who use this method, Dallas Raines foregoes jump cut editing to smoothly make the change. “B R I S K — PARTLY CLOUDY 晴れときどき曇り” goes straight mallsoft, and closing track “O f f s h o r e B r e e z e オフショアの風” features what must be our eponymous meteorologist warning us of some hurricanes off the coast. Oh, and “Dew Point 露点 • 圧力変化 Pressure Change” might be straightforward samplism, but damn if it didn’t choose a good one.